The Middle East Studies Association (MESA) meets for its annual conference on November 6-9 in Anchorage, Alaska. The event displays the work of hundreds of Middle East specialists, and thus offers a good barometer of the state of the field of Middle East studies.
It has come under criticism of late for its many failings. Martin Kramer showed in his book Ivory Towers on Sand: The Failure of Middle East Studies in America how it is riddled with extremist educators, analytical errors, and political activism.[1] “The field is pervaded by hostility to American aims, interests, and power in the Middle East, and peopled by tenured radicals who think of the United States as the incarnation of racist imperialism.”[2]
Last year’s MESA conference, held in Washington, DC, was noteworthy for the refusal of participants to discuss issues of terrorism and militant Islam. Out of five hundred papers presented, just one solitary study dealt with Al-Qaeda. Not one paper dealt with militant Islam. Suicide bombings were labeled “resistance.” When 9/11 was in fact mentioned, it was in the context of Arab suffering.[3] The association’s president, Stanford University’s Joel Beinin, lauded his colleagues’ “great wisdom” in refusing to study terrorism.
With professors like this in the US, do you think this man or this association are a positive addition to academic research or excellence? Do they in their individual capacities offer education or indoctrination? NJC
The MESA president installed at that meeting, Columbia University’s Lisa Anderson, expressed a readiness for changes, noting that the study of terrorism “has not been a priority”[4] and admonishing her collegues for a “collective abdication of responsibility” for the field’s tendency to cling to “flickers of electoral politics and glimmers of economic privatization” while neglecting the “stubborn durability of the authoritarian regimes.” Anderson went on to say that her Middle East collegues, “reluctant to jeopardize access to visas and research authorizations…failed to speak out about the often appalling circumstances of their friends and colleagues [in the Middle East].” [5]
Did the MESA members make progress over the past year? Indeed, the current MESA conference offers a few encouraging signs, but it also displays too many familiar problems.
Of nearly three hundred papers, panels, and presentations over a four-day conference, the words “terror”, “terrorist,” “terrorism,” “attack,” and “suicide bombing” do not appear once.[6] In contrast, eight papers discuss “American Orientalism,” an allusion to the late Edward Said’s theory of a racist West that is incapable of understanding the Middle East. The nine papers on women in the Middle East somehow manage to avoid the topics of “honor” killings or female circumcision.
Israel is rarely mentioned except in discussions of “expropriation of Palestinian Refugee Land” and “occupation.” Zionism, or Israeli nationalism, is the topic of only three papers. By contrast there are five papers on “Palestinian Nationalism” and an additional fifteen papers presented on other Palestinian issues.
[. . . . ]
ENDNOTES:
[1] Martin Kramer, Ivory Towers on Sand: The Failure of Middle East Studies in America, Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Washinton DC, 2001.
[2] Martin Kramer, “MESA Culpa,” Middle East Quarterly, September 2002.
[3]Jonathan Calt Harris, “Academia Silent on Militant Islam,”Frontpage Magazine, November 25, 2002.
[4] Martin Kramer and Lisa Anderson, “Middle Eastern Studies: What Went Wrong?” Special Policy Forum Report, Policywatch, Washington Institute for Near East Policy, December 16, 2002.
[5] Martin Kramer, “Glasnost in MESA,”MartinKramer.org, April 2, 2003
My Commentary:
A bit one sided, eh? The enemy within? Political correctness is our downfall. Let an Israeli speaker like Netanyahu be invited to a Canadian university to speak and the university authorities and their security detail allow the Middle Easterners and their followers to prevent his speaking; on the other hand, Palestinians and other Middle Easterner apologists get endless face time on our national Pravda and in other venues. It has gone too far here too. We need reasoned debate. NJC
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